The American Trucking Assns. and Mack Trucks visited Springfield, Ill. this week, bringing the Share the Road Safely program to area motorists.

This national program addresses the problem that most drivers are never taught how to drive safely around tractor-trailers, inadvertently initiating 75% of all truck-related car fatalities, according to the ATA.
And, because 46,400 vehicles travel I-55 through Springfield each day, the city proved to be the perfect place to share information with those who share the road with large trucks.
Featured at this week's event were professional truck drivers Jenny Zinkel of FedEx Ground, Peoria, Ill., and Richard Seigle of Roadway Express, Chicago. Duplicating a highway scenario with cars and trucks, they demonstrated to local media the blind spots around tractor-trailers where cars "disappear" from a truck driver's view -- information most motorists have never been taught.
Zinkel and Seigle said they consider the highways their workplace and strive to make them safer for all drivers. Zinkel has a 10-year driving record with more than 800,000 accident-free miles behind the wheel. She is a member of ATA's 2001 America's Road Team, a select group of truck drivers who present safety information to the public and the media.
Seigle is a member of the Roadway Express Road Team, and has been a professional driver for 24 years, accumulating 1.9 million accident-free miles.
Following the safety demonstration at Roadway Express in Springfield, reporters and photographers were given tractor-trailer rides on I-55 for a new perspective. Zinkel and Seigle gave tips on safe merging and stopping distances and explained some of the differences between how cars and large trucks operate.
The drivers appeared as part of the ATA/Mack Trucks "Share the Road" program, designed to teach the public specific skills they need to know to drive safely around trucks and large commercial vehicles. This national safety program reaches millions of U.S. households annually with its lifesaving messages.
Trucking plays an important role in the Illinois economy. The trucking industry employs more than 415,800 people in Illinois and 66% of all Illinois communities are served exclusively by truck.
Each day, trucks move building materials, machinery, petroleum, coal, processed foods, forest, mining, agricultural, steel, chemical products and more in and out of the state of Illinois, according to Robert Stranczek, president of the Illinois Trucking Assn.
Illinois recorded 1,977 vehicles involved in fatal crashes in 2000; trucks made up 163 of them. If these numbers follow national statistics, nearly 75% of the truck-related accidents were attributed to the driver of the car -- and at least 35% of them occurred in the blind spots. These numbers indicate the urgent need to educate car drivers about how to drive safely around trucks.
On a national level, large truck-related fatalities have dropped 34% in the past 10 years, while miles driven have increased by 42%. Truck-related car fatalities have dropped for the fourth year in a row and the fatal crash rate is the lowest since the U.S. Department of Transportation began keeping large truck safety records in 1975.